Drosophila titanus
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'Drosophila titanus' was a longterm project which through a process of experimentation and artificial selection aimed to develop a species of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster that would be theoretically capable of living on Saturn's largest moon Titan. While being a virtually impossible project to 'successfully' complete in pure scientific terms, 'Drosophila titanus' sited itself as a process within the ongoing discourse surrounding the complex relationships between art and science. By necessity the project needed to adhere to a rigorous scientific methodology, however it endeavours to extract artistic metaphor, poetry and ambiguity from these apparent creative restrictions. The work embraced several interwoven narratives and concepts related to issues of species, artificially created organisms and the disquieting quest for biological perfection.
Drosophila melanogaster is one of the so called 'model organisms', the workhorses of modern bio-science. Owing to its 95% genetic similarity to humans it has been used extensively in space based experiments to determine the effects of microgravity and radiation on the body, and has had a near continuous presence in space through the biosatellite programs of the 1960s, Mir, the space shuttle and the International Space Station. Drosophila continue to inform us how our own future space biology might be, and how the human body will need to adapt to make a space faring future possible.
Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and, so far, the most Earth-like place that we know; it has a thick atmosphere, continents, wind and rain. However, despite these similarities it is a radically different place. Temperatures are around -180ºC, the atmospheric pressure is 1.5 times that of Earth and the atmosphere consists of nitrogen, ammonia and hydrocarbons. The rain, rivers and seas of Titan are not water but liquid methane. However, radio frequency scans from the Cassini spacecraft suggest that there is a subsurface sea of liquid water, kept from freezing by heat from the moon's core and a large percentage of ethane. Advances in astrobiology and understanding of terrestrial extremophile organisms suggest a vague possibility of some form of extreme microbial life in this seas. In addition, characteristics of the atmospheric methane cycle are only known, so far, to be produced by microbial life.
Taking the fruit fly as a metaphor for ourselves, and Titan as a metaphor for the (early) Earth, 'Drosophila titanus' used the process of artificial selection on one original stock of drosophila with the vestigial wing phenotypical mutation. Close to the heart of the project was the study of the relationship between genotype and phenotype and the related issues of speciation. The complex relationships between genome and environment and how they become physically expressed as an organism seeks to adapt and survive formed the scientific foundation of the ongoing exploration within this work.
The project additionally addressed some darker issues such as Social Darwinism and its ultimate expression in Eugenics. The search for biological perfection and the notion of the ideal genome are implicated in the practice of artificial selection. During the peak of astronaut training in the 1960s US space program the term 'the right stuff' was used to describe a quality desired in the ideal astronaut candidate. This term suggested not just high levels of physical fitness and intelligence, but also the appropriate political and moral codes of practice. In many ways 'the right stuff' is what successful individuals of drosophila would need to display as the project progressed.
Through experiments replicating increased pressure, increasingly cold temperatures, atmospheric gas changes, circadian rhythms, gravitational perception and so on, individual flies were selected for breeding of the next generations. Consistent with the intention of taking artistic poetry and metaphor from scientific process is the notion that, in the dense atmosphere and low gravity of Titan, these almost wingless insects would maybe be able to rediscover the ecstasy of flight.
As the project developed, so did the apparatus. Growing with the project was an increasingly evolved incubator/simulator in which to keep the adapted and selected flies. In this part of the work issues around simulation theory and the perception of environment were explored. Similar to standard laboratory incubators and bioreactors, what was created here was an artificial world, where received stimuli correspond to a set of real world conditions. In standard laboratory incubators and bioreactors these perceived stimuli are what allows and encourages the organism to grow. In 'Drosophila titanus' the perceived stimuli allowed the flies to become increasingly acclimatised to a set of environmental conditions alien to their 'natural' domain. Here we enter into questions about the nature of reality and how our receptivity to information conditions our conscious and subconscious reactions.